Any news on a release date for this? I’m holding off a couple of other purchases while I wait.

Hey, don't hold your breath !
Hardwarewise I have some prototypes ready, with the new 'muting at bootup' feature.
but still needs more TSR debugging and testing.
Feel free to PM me if you are interested in early access.

If you developed software for TNDLPT, please add this initialisation :
Pin CE must be 0 and Reset must be 1 for at least 100ms at init, to unlocking the mute state after startup.
This should be backwards compatible with older TNDLPT.